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Food for Thought

While doing my normal rounds of blogs I follow in Google Reader, I came across the latest from Yashar Ali at The Current Conscience. As it is something that strongly resonates me, I feel a need to specifically point out it:

I hesitate on claiming the abuse part as something that is in my own experience, even though it was. A girl in my neighborhood acted out her sexual abuse on myself and my sister, though I still don’t know how I feel about it. It… happened, and that was that, I guess? Truly, it’s something I rarely bring up, because when I do, it seems to invite people to start pissing contests about how their abuses were so much worse and bad and I need to shut up… pretty stupid, neh? It happened, as have a lifetime of what I consider crueller abuses – sustainedly attacking me at the core of who I am and what I am for absolutely no reason other than attempting a momentary high for being ‘better’ than someone.

For you see, I too am a private person, and for much the same reasons. I am petrified of people trying to find and exploit my weaknesses. I’m petrified, even knowing that I’ve set myself up for several self-fulfilling prophecies by trying to be all strong; there are many people that were part of my life who presumed it was okay to try to tear me down to make themselves feel better. I’ve cut most of those now, and am getting better at sharing what’s going on in my heart… though I still don’t understand why people didn’t take my open invite to come ask themselves. As an introvert, I’ll never really be a soapboxer, after all. But if someone cares enough to ask, then they’ve probably earned the right to be told, I’d always reasoned… then backed it up with an immediate dismissal of anyone using the foulest phrase in English. ‘How are you?’ they ask, not actually wanting to know – it’s such a filler phrase that my knee-jerk response is seething ire. There is definitely a lack of trust in that set of responses, I concede.

So in short – there is a wound, and I’ve not quite gotten to where I can start the trusting and the healing in a grand scale. It’s oddly comforting to know that I’m not the only one fighting their way out of their self-built prison; to know that others can break free gives me hope that I can finish the transition to something a bit less burdened. I’ll always be somewhat private and I’ll definitely always be introverted. I’ll probably always be concerned as coming off as someone behaving in an attention-seeking manner when I do manage to coax myself into sharing the inner tickings… but I’ll get there in time.

I’ll add as an addendum – hopefully this makes sense. My train of thought has been basically shoved in a gulch and set alight by my toddler deciding to have a meltdown over wearing shoes (sigh, two year olds!), and my father-in-law asking me what happened (which got his head bit off ’cause I didn’t want to talk about it right then ’cause I was still trying to unpanic from the incident!). I tried to put it back together, but eh… can’t all have good days, right? At the least, I can hope my thoughts provide food for thoughts for my fellow isolationarinos – we can break the cycle that put us here, and stop keeping ourselves in the victim role.